Harvey Keitel biography

Born in Brooklyn, Harvey Keitel was a delinquent who was thrown out of vocational school for truancy. This ultimately led him to Lebanon with the U.S. Marine Corps. When he got returned home, he studied with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. As a struggling actor, he landed some acting roles off-off-Broadway while making a living as a court stenographer and as a shoe salesman.

Fate struck at 26 when he answered the newspaper ad of an N.Y.U. student director, Martin Scorsese. Keitel was cast in Scorsese's thesis film, and then in Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver. Over time, Keitel became typecast as an intense, back-alley thug (Wise Guys andBad Lieutenant ), a stereotype that proved impossible to transcend with his biblical role in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. He earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of gangster Mickey Cohen in Bugsy (1991) and finally managed to drop the thug persona in 1993 in The Piano, Jane Campion's award-winning film. He put in a strong performance in Reservoir Dogs, for a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino, and his involvement in Pulp Fiction helped get that hit movie made. He and Tarantino reunited once again in 1996 for the vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn.

Harvey has a son with his wife, Daphna Kaster, whom he met at the Toronto Film Festival. He also has a daughter born in 1985, with ex-girlfriend Lorraine Bracco, and a son born in 2001, with ex-girlfriend Lisa Karmazin.